The University of Massachusetts Amherst

Category: Governance

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Faculty Honors & Awards Faculty Research Governance Science, technology & society

Fountain Appointed UMass Distinguished Professor

University of Massachusetts President Robert L. Caret has appointed Professor Jane Fountain (political science and public policy) a distinguished professor.

Fountain is a world-renowned expert on using technology to improve government services and accountability: She founded the National Center for Digital Government and has served as chair and vice chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Government. Fountain is also highly regarded in the United States for her research on innovative and effective governance structures.

“We are honored to have Jane as a faculty member at the Center for Public Policy and Administration,” said Kathryn McDermott, CPPA’s acting director. “Jane is a world-class researcher, but also makes a point to convey that research to people in the trenches. She is committed to using her findings to ensure that governments around the world make information more openly accessible to their citizens.”

Long before Fountain had a leadership position at the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Future of Government, she was considered a global expert on the subject. Her 2001 book, Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change, was translated into Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. She has worked with governments and research institutions at the World Bank, United Nations and European Commission, as well as in Japan, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Mexico, Chile, Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

More recently, Fountain’s expertise has been employed closer to home. In 2012 Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick appointed her to his Council for Innovation, which advises the governor on opportunities to use technology to streamline delivery of services to people, businesses and local governments. Fountain is also an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, an independent body that helps government leaders build more effective, efficient, accountable and transparent public sector organizations.

At UMass, Fountain directs the National Center for Digital Government and heads the Science, Technology and Society Initiative, both of which are based at CPPA. The National Center was created with support from the National Science Foundation to develop research and infrastructure for the emerging field of information technology and governance. The Science, Technology and Society Initiative conducts multidisciplinary research on the intersection of science and technology with today’s social, political and economic issues.

Before coming to UMass in 2006, Fountain was a faculty member at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She earned her Ph.D. in political science and organizational behavior from Yale University; a master of education in administration, planning and social policy from Harvard University; and a bachelor’s degree from the Boston Conservatory of Music.

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Faculty Research Governance

Fountain Publishes New Report on Cross-Agency Collaboration

Professor Jane Fountain (political science and public policy) has released a report through the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), a public-private partnership whose goal is to make government work more efficiently.

The report, titled “Examining Constraints To, and Providing Tools For, Cross-Agency Collaboration,” is publicly available on the ACUS website for public comment, and, in December, ACUS members will vote on a set of recommendations to federal government entities based on Fountain’s study.

“Cross-agency collaboration is widely viewed as a powerful means for government reform and performance improvement,” said Fountain. “Greater coordination across agencies offers the potential for the federal government to address complex policy challenges that lie inherently across agency boundaries and jurisdictions. …[Such collaboration promises] a means to increase efficiency, effectiveness and accountability by reducing overlap, redundancy and fragmentation.”

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Modernization Act of 2010 seeks to expand the federal government’s use of cross-agency collaboration to solve complex policy problems such as food safety, sustainable communities, veteran homelessness and energy efficiency and to make government more efficient and effective.

GPRA Modernization introduces new tools to foster collaboration, according to Fountain, but little attention has been given to a series of institutional challenges to cross-agency coordination. Fountain’s report “examines the use of tools by federal agency political appointees and career decision makers to overcome and work within these institutional challenges,” she said. “The recommendations encourage wider use of such tools to advance cross-agency collaboration in federal agencies.”

Fountain, who also directs the National Center for Digital Government, is currently working with graduate and undergraduate research assistants at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to develop the report into a book.

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Faculty Research Governance

Fountain Interviewed on Collaborative Governance on Federal News Radio

Professor Jane Fountain (political science and public policy) spoke about collaborative governance during a special edition earlier this month of Federal News Radio’s program the Business of Government Hour.

During the hour-long interview Fountain highlighted findings from her report Implementing Cross-Agency Collaboration: A Guide for Federal Managers, published by the IBM Center for the Business of Government. Cross-agency collaborations are more manageable today, and even encouraged, thanks in part to recent legal changes as well as advances in technology. Fountain’s interview focuses on how managers can foster cross-agency collaboration as a way of doing business and serving the public. Throughout the program, she called on her empirical research from the last three presidential administrations.

Fountain also serves as the director of the National Center for Digital Government (NCDG), housed at the Center for Public Policy and Administration at UMass Amherst. NCDG was created with support from the National Science Foundation to develop research and infrastructure for the emerging field of information technology and governance. CPPA is the hub of interdisciplinary public policy research, teaching and engagement at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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Alumni news Faculty Honors & Awards Faculty Research Governance Science, technology & society

CPPA Team Recognized in Collaborative Governance Competition

Lucia Miller (MPPA ’12) and Associate Professor Charles Schweik (environmental conservation and public policy) have received an honorable mention in an international competition of case studies and simulations that focus on collaboration in public management.

The student-teacher duo studied the use in Massachusetts state government of open standards, a topic that has long been of interest to Schweik. They began working together while Miller was in Schweik’s Information Technology class and continued the project after she graduated last spring. Schweik and Miller then submitted their report, titled “The Adoption of Technology Open Standards Policy by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” to the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC) at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.

“As a very non-traditional graduate student, I was looking to the MPPA program to backfill my 25-plus years of experience in the nonprofit world,” said Miller, who is the development director in the University of Massachusetts’ College of Humanities and Fine Arts. “When Charlie mentioned his interest in researching and writing a case on the Commonwealth’s open standards policy, I jumped on the opportunity to work with him. I knew that not only would I learn a lot, but also would be teaming up with one of the most innovative IT educators and scholars. It was an honor and a great project.”

The winning peer-reviewed studies in the PARCC competition are made available on the program’s website as a free, online resource for educators around the globe whose teaching focuses on collaborative public management, networks, governance, and/or problem solving.

Schweik has been recognized repeatedly for his cutting-edge approaches to both studying and teaching about open-source technology. Last fall he was named one of 2012’s top 50 innovators in education by the Center for Digital Education. Earlier this month he received an award honoring the legacy of Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom for his innovative efforts over the last 15 years to study Internet-based collective action, particularly related to open-source software.

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Faculty Research Governance

Fountain Identifies Ingredients of Successful Cross-Agency Government Partnerships

Professor Jane Fountain (political science and public policy) has published a new report that spells out the recipe for successful working relationships across government agencies. The report, titled Implementing Cross-Agency Collaboration: A Guide for Federal Managers and released by the IBM Center for The Business of Government, indicates that the success of these important partnerships depends on two main ingredients: effective people skills and strong management systems.

According to Fountain’s report, managers of successful cross-agency collaborations “must use interpersonal and team-level skills, while simultaneously working with others to develop rigorous management processes and systems robust enough to be sustained across formal bureaucratic boundaries.” In other words, it’s not enough for managers to work well with people in general; they must also be strategic and intentional about establishing smart processes that can be translated across and applied to many different agencies.

Fountain identifies seven key organiza­tional processes that foster cross-agency collaboration:

  • Setting significant goals
  • Specifying roles and responsibilities
  • Formalizing agreements
  • Developing shared operations
  • Obtaining adequate resources
  • Creating effective communication channels
  • Adapting through shared learning

This report was done in part as a response to the Government Performance and Results Act Modernization Act of 2010, which mandates increased cross-agency collaboration. Fountain concludes the paper with recommendations to the Office of Budget Management, to improve partnerships between government agencies during President Obama’s second term.

In addition to her role as professor, Fountain directs the National Center for Digital Government (NCDG), housed at the Center for Public Policy and Administration at UMass Amherst. NCDG was created with support from the National Science Foundation to develop research and infrastructure for the emerging field of information technology and governance. CPPA is the hub of interdisciplinary public policy research, teaching and engagement at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Listen to Fountain talk about her new report on Federal News Radio.

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Environmental policy Governance Science, technology & society

Feb. 8 Panel to Discuss Public Engagement in Biodiversity Governance

NOTE: This event has been canceled due to Friday’s expected blizzard.

The Science, Technology and Society Initiative at the Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA) will host a panel discussion titled “Governing Biodiversity: Citizen Voices on the Global Stage” on Friday, Feb. 8 at 1:30 p.m. in Gordon Hall 302-304. Panelists will use the recent World Wide Views on Biodiversity project as an example of how the general public can be effectively engaged in environmental policy discussions.

As part of the World Wide Views project, CPPA lecturer Gretchen Gano and two CPPA students worked last summer and fall to recruit 100 participants from across Massachusetts for a day-long discussion about environmental regulations and policies. The Massachusetts event, held at the Museum of Science in Boston, was one of 34 that took place in 25 countries around the globe. Results from all of the sessions were then compiled into a report, which was released in October at the meeting in Hyderabad, India, of the U.N. Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity. CPPA was able to participate in the project thanks to a university Public Service Endowment grant to the Science, Technology and Society Initiative.

Next month’s panel will include Gano? David Sittenfeld, Forum program manager at the Museum of Science, Boston? Richard Worthington, professor of politics and chair of the Program in Public Policy Analysis at Pomona College? and Darlene Cavalier, contributing editor for Discover Magazine and founder of the citizen science site SciStarter. Professor Jane Fountain (political science and public policy) will moderate.

CPPA is the hub of interdisciplinary public policy research, teaching and engagement at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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Governance Science, technology & society

National Center for Digital Government Hosts Five International Fellows

During the 2012-2013 academic year, the National Center for Digital Government (NCDG) is hosting five international scholars. Each is researching ways to make both government and technology more accessible in their home countries. The Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA) is delighted to have the following scholars in our ranks this year:

  • Diego Rafael Canabarro is a research assistant at the Center for International Studies on Government of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil. His research explores the relationship between the adoption of information and communication technology, state capacity, and democracy.
  • Raquel Galindo-Dorado is a professor of economics and business and director of the International Academic Research Program at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She is working on a project with the Harvard Kennedy School that is assessing the curricular needs and innovations at business management graduate programs throughout Latin America. She will then use that research as a template for evaluating graduate public policy programs in the same region.
  • Dwi Elfrida Martina is an e-service officer at the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies of the Republic of Indonesia. During her NCDG fellowship, she is also pursuing a master’s degree in public policy and administration at CPPA. Her research focuses on internet governance and inclusion in the information society.
  • Toks Oyedemi is a lecturer at the Department of Communication at UMass Amherst. His research explores the intersection of (dis)empowerment, social inequality and communication technology throughout Africa. Currently he is examining patterns of digital inclusion and exclusion among South African youth.
  • Sreela Sarkar is an instructor at the Social Thought and Political Economy program and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication at UMass Amherst. While at NCDG, Sarkar is working on two collaborative research projects: 1) Examining the intersection of broadband internet access with collaborative governance practices and civic participation in western Massachusetts; and 2) A comparative study of the effect that technology use in health programs has on notions of “modern citizenship” among marginalized groups in South Africa and India.

NCDG was created with support from the National Science Foundation to develop research and infrastructure for the emerging field of information technology and governance. It is housed at CPPA, the hub of interdisciplinary public policy research, teaching and engagement at UMass Amherst.

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Faculty Honors & Awards Faculty Research Governance Science, technology & society

Fountain Elected to National Academy of Public Administration

Professor Jane Fountain (political science and public policy) has been elected a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, which was chartered by Congress in 1967 as an independent body to help government leaders build more effective, efficient, accountable and transparent public sector organizations. Fountain will be inducted as a new fellow during the National Academy’s annual meeting tomorrow in Washington, D.C.

The National Academy relies on its fellows to conduct in-depth studies and analyses that anticipate, evaluate and make recommendations on crucial public management, governance, policy and operational challenges that face the federal government and public sector organizations. Fellows also provide technical assistance, Congressional testimony and participate in forums or conferences.

Fountain joins roughly 700 fellows that include members of Congress; federal and state cabinet members; federal department deputy and undersecretaries; governors; mayors; leading scholars; and chancellors, presidents and deans of colleges and universities. Fellows often are asked to lend their expertise on complex issues that require agreements and partnerships bridging various government departments and agencies, and that sometimes necessitate public-private alliances. For example, National Academy fellows have helped create a management transformation plan for federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies and have established benchmarks for environmental programs that span federal, state and local sectors.

New fellows are elected by the entire membership after a rigorous nomination process each spring. This is the latest honor Fountain has received for her work on improving government services and transparency around the globe. Last spring, she was named to Gov. Deval Patrick’s Council for Innovation, an appointed body that advises the governor on ways to improve government efficiency and use technology to streamline delivery of services to people, businesses and local governments. Fountain also is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Government, a group that she chaired in 2010-2011.

In addition to these posts, Fountain directs the National Center for Digital Government and heads the Science, Technology and Society Initiative, both of which are based at the Center for Public Policy and Administration. The National Center was created with support from the National Science Foundation to develop research and infrastructure for the emerging field of information technology and governance. The Science, Technology and Society Initiative conducts multidisciplinary research on the intersection of science and technology with today’s social, political and economic issues.

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Governance

Pioneer Valley Nonprofits Invited to Submit Consulting Proposals

Nonprofits in the Pioneer Valley are invited to submit proposals for consulting projects related to board governance, strategic planning, volunteer management and executive leadership. As part of this fall’s Nonprofit Governance course, teams of students in the Master of Public Policy and Administration program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst will work with the nonprofits selected on their management consulting projects.

Interested nonprofit organizations are asked to submit proposals outlining clearly defined projects for students to undertake. Applicants must demonstrate an interest in and an ability to work with student teams in the development and implementation of projects. Faculty will select proposals based upon applicability to course content and ability to complete project(s) within one semester (approximately 12 weeks).

Agencies are invited to submit proposals focused on:

  • Board governance (board diversity, board orientation, board development)
  • Strategic planning (advance planning, process planning, plan implementation)
  • Volunteer management (alternative ways to organize management, volunteer preparation, volunteer evaluation)
  • Executive leadership (executive/staff relations, executive/board relations, succession planning)

Email completed applications by Friday, August 24, 2012, to Brenda Bushouse, associate professor of political science and public policy, at bushouse@polsci.umass.edu.

Full details about this opportunity, including the application form, are available here.

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Faculty Honors & Awards Faculty Research Governance Science, technology & society

Fountain named to Governor’s Council for Innovation

Jane Fountain, professor of political science and public policy, is one of 11 Massachusetts-based experts on technology and government who has been appointed to Gov. Deval Patrick’s newly formed Council for Innovation. The council will advise the governor on the best opportunities to improve government efficiency and use technology to streamline delivery of services to people, businesses and local governments.

Fountain is the founder and director of the National Center for Digital Government, based at the Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA) at UMass Amherst. The National Center was created with support from the National Science Foundation to develop research and infrastructure for the emerging field of information technology and governance. Fountain also heads the Science, Technology and Society Initiative at CPPA, which conducts multidisciplinary research on the intersection of science and technology with today’s social, political and economic issues.

Prior to this appointment by Gov. Patrick, much of Fountain’s work on e-governance has had an international focus. In recent years she has served as chair and vice chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Government.

“This is much closer to home than most of my work,” Fountain said. “It is an honor to serve on this council and to represent our campus in doing so.”

In a news release this week, Gov. Patrick said the goal of the new council is to “support innovation across state government by engaging experts and entrepreneurs to help us make targeted investments in new technology. The Commonwealth’s Council for Innovation will help us find new opportunities to use cutting edge technology to improve service delivery and cut expenses.”

“Our Administration is committed to providing new tools and resources to improve the way government serves people,” said Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray. “The work of the council will be critical as we apply technology to improve everything we do in government including creating jobs, having safer neighborhoods, closing the achievement gap and containing health care costs.”

Proposed in the governor’s fiscal year 2013 budget recommendation, the council will enhance the administration’s ongoing efforts to improve services to residents, businesses and local governments by engaging with technology experts and entrepreneurs to focus on creating technology upgrades that will help streamline the delivery of services.

Joining Fountain on the council are venture capitalists, founders of successful start-ups, technology specialists, innovation experts and other academics. Council members will use their breadth of experience to help the Patrick administration set technology and innovation priorities, identify new opportunities for government to leverage technology to support innovative approaches to delivering government services and identify new partnerships for delivering programs and services to residents.

“The Patrick-Murray Administration has worked to reform the role information technology plays in government so we can invest in IT more wisely, and ensure our IT services are delivered more reliably and with better alignment to business priorities,” said the Commonwealth’s Chief Information Officer John Letchford. “I look forward to working with the governor and Innovation Council to drive technology-infused business strategies that will continue to enhance how we deliver government services to Commonwealth residents, businesses and local governments.”

The Patrick administration has a track record of technology-supported innovation across state government, including implementing a new call system at the Division of Unemployment Assistance that reduces the wait times and implementing “eLicensing” at the Department of Public Safety to allow companies and individuals to apply and pay for their licensing and renewals on-line. Additionally, the administration’s effort to consolidate IT services through Executive Order 532 has generated an estimated $14 million in savings for the Commonwealth since 2011.

In addition to establishing a Council for Innovation to support innovation efforts across state government, the executive order creates a Government Innovation Officer (GIO) position within the Executive Office for Administration and Finance to focus on improving internal government efficiencies and identifying technology savings and efficiencies. The executive order also establishes a statewide innovation competition to solicit proposals for innovative uses of technology that will enable the Commonwealth to better serve its residents and save money. Details on the competition are being developed and will be announced in the coming months.

The council members include:

  • Mohamad Ali (Arlington, MA), Chairman of the Mass Technology Leadership Council
  • Jeff Bussgang (Newton, MA), General partner at Flybridge Venture Capital and Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship
  • Marla Capozzi (Wellesley, MA), Senior innovation expert and co-leader of Global Innovation at McKinsey & Company
  • Art Dorfman (Sharon, MA), National vice president for SAP America
  • Jane Fountain (Sturbridge, MA), Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
  • Diane Hessan (Boston, MA), President and CEO CommuniSpace
  • Elaine Karmack (Brewster, MA), Professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
  • Andrew McAfee (Cambridge, MA), Principal research scientist at MIT’s Center for Digital Business at the Sloan School of Management
  • Bill Oates (Brighton, MA), Chief information officer for the City of Boston
  • Jim O’Neill (Hingham, MA), Chief information officer at HubSpot
  • Phil Swisher (Boston, MA), Senior vice president for innovation at Brown Brothers Harriman